Coastal

The USGS will establish Rod Surface Elevation Tables at five National Wildlife Refuges on the Texas coast. This work will support climate adaptation and resilience planning by identifying areas susceptible to loss and degradation due to sea-level rise and extreme climatic events along the Texas Gulf Coast.

USGS researchers will will survey elevation and vegetation in wetlands and vegetated dunes on Horn, Petite Bois, and Ship Islands; Correct the best available lidar-based digital elevation model; estimate inundation for the Gulf Islands National Seashore under various water levels and relative sea-level rise scenarios; and quantify and predict potential marsh migration for the Gulf Islands National...

USGS researchers are conducting research on St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge and throughout coastal habitat in Northwest Florida to inform future management decisions in the Refuge and contribute to the growing knowledge of the ecology of gopher tortoises using coastal habitats.

Eighteen USGS coastal scientists from all four coasts of the conterminous United States are working together to advance the understanding of climate change and sea-level rise impacts to coastal wetlands.

Mangrove forests have migrated inland over the past few decades at many locations along the northern Gulf coast. This expansion has been attributed to factors associated with climate change, such as increased salinity resulting from sea-level rise and longer intervals between winter freezes, which can kill cold-intolerant mangrove species.

The federally threatened piping plover relies on sand-beach habitat year-round for nesting, foraging, and roosting, habitat that is particularly vulnerable to loss and degradation from coastal development, recreation activities, erosion, and sea-level rise.

USGS researchers are examining germination of Purple Loosestrife to determine if the seed bank can reestablish this invasive species in the Mississippi Delta.

Researchers are investigating beach compaction, the incubation environment for turtle nests, and shorebird nest abundance at beaches throughout the southeastern United States to better understand the impacts of beach compaction to nesting turtles and foraging seabirds.

The USGS is participating in the Louisiana-Trustee Implementation Group Monitoring and Adaptive Management work group to assess the injuries caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to select the appropriate restoration measures to compensate the public for the injury to coastal and marine resources.

The USGS is collaborating with researchers from other agencies, academia, and industry to predict coastal impacts from hurricanes. The results from this study will better inform coastal morphological change models, which will lead to improved hurricane impact projections.

USGS researchers will provide technical guidance to inform the development of monitoring plans for the western coast of Louisiana.

Turbid water conditions make the delineation and characterization of benthic habitats difficult by traditional in situ and remote sensing methods. Consequently, only a small fraction of this valuable resource has been mapped or characterized.